


Severed Constellation

by JackoLillee



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Work In Progress, believe it - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-11 00:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackoLillee/pseuds/JackoLillee
Summary: On his way home from a routine border patrol, a teenage Iruka stumbles upon an ambush gone wrong. In the derelict shelter of an old, forgotten outpost, three rogue ninja taunt the last remaining survivor of a team of war-ravaged ANBU.Outclassed, outnumbered, and out of his mind with fury, Iruka decides right then-at the sound of the silver-haired boy's voice breaking in a roar of heated agony-that he had to do something."Hand clenched tight around the spine of his kunai, heart squeezing sickly in his throat, a thunderous rage burning from the resolute glare of his brown eyes; Iruka readied himself to kill.The boy sprawled on the floor between the two Iwa-nin tried to laugh through a mouthful of blood, the exhalation hitching and curtailing into a fragile whimper as they pummeled and pinned him roughly to the floor. They laughed as he struggled, as his movements became more desperate and frustrated. When the sounds of ripping fabric and the ANBU's hoarse crying began to fill the flat starless night, Iruka felt himself sharpen to ice.He'd never killed before. But, by Kami, that was about to fucking change."





	1. Chapter One

 

 

 

...

Severed Constellation

...

The night air was thin and airless with frost. It churned with the mist of his breath as Iruka launched himself, light-footed and buoyant as a hare, from branch to branch of the upper boughs of Konoha's western border. 

It'd been over eighteen months since the Third Shinobi World War had been officially called to an end, a reluctant treatise having been begrudgingly signed between all the warring nations. But, as far as the chunin could tell, that didn't mean shit.

It seemed like every week there was some new story about broken trading routes or cleverly orchestrated infiltration attempts on the Hokage's closest advisors. Everyone was on their toes. Peace may have been on the rise, but safety was far from for certain.

Which is why, schoolteacher in training though he was, Iruka found himself outside running border patrol on a cold late-autumn night like tonight. With all the extra measures in security being erected, every able body had been assigned to the protection of the village outskirts. 

Darting through the gaps between trees faster than a dropping shadow, Iruka let sounds and smells of the starless night fill his senses. The soft chirps of lonely crickets, the dry rattle of skittering leaves. The forlorn call of wildcat howling in the distance-

 

-"Wait a second."

Iruka skidded to a halt, heels digging into the bark of a lightly bobbing branch, and looked behind him with a puzzled furrow of his brows.

That was no wildcat.

...

* * *

 

...

"Stop. Let him try and stand."

The deep voiced Iwa-nin with the enormous broadsword strapped to his back and the overgrown brows grinned, crossing his bulky arms across his chest bemusedly. 

His partner snickered once but relented, stepping back from where Kakashi was crumpled, muscles quivering with exhaustion on the floor, and propped the weight of his wooden staff over a shoulder. 

Less than an arms reach away from where he lay sprawled, eyes dim as the realms of dusty marbles, the freshly deceased body of his teammate stared accusingly at the Copy-Ninja through the shattered ivory of a shrew mask and pools of still dribbling blood. 

A sound halfway between a stomach-deep groan and an inhuman growl of rage so thick it could have been madness hissed out from between his bloodied lips. Kakashi pushed himself up on his elbows, battered body shaking with the strain of pulling his knees up under him. 

Air huffed in uneven, wet spurts from the splintering ache of his chest as he struggled to breath through what had to be multiple broken ribs. There was a sound like fuzzy rain slicing through the foggy mesh that'd become his hearing, the itchy trickle of cooling blood seeping into his ear from a brutal gash to his head. It dripped in a discordant staccato by the splayed fingers of his black gloved hand, connecting with the rest of the seeping blood along the old, dusty floorboards by thin and wiggling tributaries. 

It was almost beautiful to see. Red lines of fluid art sliding in the dark beneath him. From him.

Kakashi got one knee up underneath him, but the pain in his ribs and back was so intense that for a moment he was wracked with deep shudders of agony-unable to move another inch. Through the messy spill of his blood-splattered bangs, the silver-haired shinobi forced his flinching, mismatched stare up, up, up until it met the hollow regard of his murdered teammate. 

"I-Itsu..ki.."

 The departed's name was breathed softly into the night, a surreal wash of remorse and devastation coloring the tattered voice of the last surviving member of ANBU team Asagao. Kakashi was able to pull one blood-slicked sandal under him.

"Let him have it."

The wooden staff cracked down over the curved shell of his back with all the obliterating force of a falling tree.

...

* * *

 

...

 Following the stilted cries had led him here. To an old, abandoned lookout post on the farthest edges of Konoha's western territorry. 

Iruka took in the pock-marked wooden planks that made up the walls of the shelter, the flickering of secretive torchlight and the exchange of gruff voices from where he stood a short distance away, cloaked in the shadow of an ancient oak. Debating with himself.

There was definitely something going on. Something bad, if the uneasy humming in the balls of his feet and the sour tang in the pit of his stomach were anything to go by. But, should he risk investigating further?

He was only a chunin, and this was only a routine border patrol.

According to protocol, if he were to discover anything worthy of note, he was technically under strict orders to retreat. Scurry back to headquarters and report so a team of hastily banded jounin could be sent out to sniff out the root of the issue. 

But, Iruka chewed his bottom lip indecisively, this outpost was the farthest from the Village Center. By the time he would have made it back to report, chances are that whatever was going on in the ramshackle wooden cabin would have already happened. It'd be too late.

And, if the rapid percussion of battering thunks-the undisguisable sound of something hard and compact striking flesh-was anything to go by, there wasn't any time to be wasted.

Brushing a stray wisp of brunette hair back from where it'd slipped over his hitae-ate, the chunin slunk determinedly closer.

Close enough to make out words.

"How frustrated you must be..." a deep, nasally voice chuckled and, when there was no reply, a sharp slap split the tense quiet. Iruka cloaked a gasp with the cup of his hand, brown eyes wide where he stood with his back against the front of the small building, to the side of the open, gaping entranceway.

"An elite like you," purposeful, intimidating footsteps plodded in a hungry sort of pacing, "should be stronger."

Ragged, barely steady breathing was the only audible reply.

"You're right, Yuto," another voice, weedy and grating cut in jovially; almost seeming to derive some twisted pleasure from the obvious distress of the so-far voiceless party that was battling just to breathe, "With the combined power of our chakra-suppressing taijutsu attacks, this was almost too easy."

"Speak for yourself, Yushin," the low voice of the man called Yuto snorted, "I worked hard for this. I deserve a reward."

The weedy voiced man by the name of Yushin seemed to find this hilarious. Iruka felt a prickly fleet of goosebumps gloss over his skin as the two strangers laughed darkly.

There was the soft sounds of somebody moving against the dry, wooden planks of the cabin floor. Raw, terrified breathing.

Iruka frowned. 

This was too unclear. His chunin senses told him that there were three living people in the small enclosure. A couple dead.

But, beyond that, he would need to sneak a look to get the full picture. Nervousness clotted like spoiled milk in the bottom of his stomach. Iruka swallowed his anxiety, funneled it into adrenaline, and ducked to the side of the cabin swiftly. Creeping lightly on the pads of his feet, feeling along the grizzled wood of the wall with stealthy fingertips, the lone patrol runner found the lip of an unshuttered window. Curling the tips of his fingers carefully along the edge, he pulled himself up by fractional increments until the orange, fluttering light of the torches inside were revealed to him.

Iruka peeked in through the window, stiffened in hair-raised horror for the barest split of a second-and he dropped back down to a crouch beneath the windowsill. Fist stuffed between his teeth to muffle the neon scream of horror that threatened to burst free. 

The floor and walls were matted with blood and the congealed, dripping slime of what appeared to be human insides. The smell was putrid, vile and permeating in a cloying, coppery cloud that made the temples pulse and the gag reflex lurch. Beneath the nightmarish flickering of two sputtering torches, a boy lay on the floor moving weakly between the feet of two Iwa-nin. 

There were four dead bodies surrounding, tossed and scattered and broken like the mistreated toys of an errant child. 

All of them dressed in the same eerie, bone-white plated armor and oily-slick black spandex uniforms of the ANBU. Their still, bloodied animal masks were stony and grotesque. Macabre in the extreme.

Iruka steeled himself. Peered back over the edge of the window into the cabin again. Anger rising.

The boy on the floor coughed, and the coughing continued-the two enemy ninja laughing-until the boy had to curl on his side. Shaking, blood-drenched gloves moved instinctively, wrenching the pale moon face of the wolf mask from his mussed head of silvery hair. Scrabbling at the edge of a dark, spandex face mask before yanking that down too. 

And it was the strangest, most frightening thing in the world what happened next.

A feeling of slowly building heat leaked through Iruka the moment his eyes connected with the silver haired boy's unmasked, gasping face. His heart grew swollen and wet, it stumbled over itself and chugged powerfully in his chest. The palms of his hands tightened and then poured sweat. His mouth dried.

He watched as the angel spat blood and then smiled.

It was a broken, helpless grimace of a smile. But it flooded the chunin's heart with a light so bright it was all he could do not to cry.

...

* * *

 

...

 "Looks like he's going to help you, Yuto." Yushin cackled in a high pitched voice. 

Kakashi swallowed air and blood, tears from Obito's Sharingan slipping like strands of cold silk down his bruised cheek as he stared up at his captors. Black spots floated whimsically before his eyes and he knew, distantly, that he was close, so terribly close to falling.

The smell of his teammates blood was uncompromising. He could hardly notice anything else.

 _Dead._ Some small, childish part of him was wailing,  _Dead. Dead. All of us-_

 _-_ "How nice."

And then the Iwa-nin with the broadsword and the furry brows was rolling Kakashi over onto his back. The man stepped down onto the jounin's shoulder until the weight of it was enough for a jagged spear of white-hot agony to lance through him. The Copy-Ninja, known across the Nations as the son of the White Fang, an omen of destruction and damnation, heard himself scream. 

The pressure did not relent an iota.

"Ah-AUAHH!!" he started thrashing, squirming in the blood pooled on the floor like a hooked fish, eyes screwed shut in tortured bewilderment. 

"Heh."

Yuto pressed down even harder, thick brows drawing together in an almost absent, hungry expression. His heel ground into the bundle of nerves in the jounin's shoulder. Blue and white sparks pirouetted behind Kakashi's eyelids, and then, without even meaning to, he started crying a little. The pain was incredible.

"Looks like he's begging you." Yushin's smug smile was audible in his wavery voice.

All of a sudden, as abruptly as it'd come, the obliterating pressure against his shoulder was released. Kakashi slitted his eyes open, lungs wheezing on the razor's edge of tears, hands open and useless by his ears. Chest heaving. Blood trickling. Skin shivering, coated with sweat.

"Hungry Konoha slut."

Fear solidified into something dark and jagged in the bottom of his belly as the Iwa-nin stepped over his prone body, straddling him dominantly.

_Dead._

_..._

* * *

 

_..._

 "Fuck you." 

The boy coughed on his own blood, eyes screwing shut as he laughed. It was a miserable, rusty sounding noise to hear. Iruka was frozen where he knelt, looking in through the window and watching the scene unfold before him helplessly. His heart in his throat.

And then Yuto, the bigger of the two Iwa-nin, scoffed. The man unslung his broadsword and let it fall tauntingly just out of reach of the silver-haired boy half curled in a ball on the floor between his feet. Something bright and definitive like a warning signal sparked and then sizzled into being in Iruka's gut at the movement. 

"No, little boy." Yuto growled, and he sank menacingly to his knees over the unmasked ANBU, "Fuck. You."

The silver-haired boy's eyes snapped open and Iruka was shocked to see that the irises behind those slanted, pain-squinted lashes were two different colors. Cold, permafrost cold grey-so dark it was almost black.

And red.

Red the color of unspoken hell.

It couldn't be...

But, before he could discern the ANBU's identity, the scene before him escalated again. Iruka watched from outside the cabin, feeling impossibly small and incredibly weak and helpless, as the other Iwa-nin, Yushin, came around to the boy's feet. With two binding, uncaring hands, he grabbed the ANBU's ankles and held them fast to the floor about a shoulder's length apart.

"How shameful." Yuto's voice intoned huskily, eyes riveted to the pinned ANBU's slanted, anxious brows and parted, breathless lips. He pressed his thumb to the corner of the boy's mouth, right where a dribble of blood was collecting, and the silver haired boy's eyes widened. His entire body jerked and his fine brow flashed furiously.

But, all of a sudden, both of the boy's slim wrists were being crushed in one of Yuto's big, doughy hands. With both his legs chained down by the lock of Yushin's steely grip, it was impossible to escape.

"Nngh-" A small whimper of nervousness rang out and was immediately swallowed by the rolling whisper of the burning torch fire.

The sound was a dagger of purest snow. And it hit fair and true-square in the center of Iruka's heart.

 Yuto's thumb was traveling. Spreading the blood like a gloss across the silky plush of the boy's bottom lip. Worming its way in, corkscrewing between the ANBU's minutely quivering lips and into his mouth.

Yushin's hands moved like a shadow, forcing the boy's legs further apart with a rough jerk that jostled his whole frame.

Iruka's hand found his kunai.

"Looks like you've done this before." Yuto smirked down at his prey, withdrawing his thumb before it could be bitten off by the snick of a notably sharper than average incisor. The Iwa-nin laughed, brought the flat palm of his hand swinging powerfully into the side of the ANBU's face, sending his whole head rolling, wild silver hair tossing saccharine in the torchlight.

Hand clenched tight around the spine of his kunai, heart squeezing sickly in his throat, a thunderous rage burning from the resolute glare of his brown eyes; Iruka readied himself to kill. 

 "S'not my first... rodeo-"

The pinned boy smirked devilishly, for an instant appearing to be completely in control of the situation, and to see it made Iruka's knees feel immaterial. 

Yuto caught the boy's face with one hand, crushing already bruised cheeks. The silver-haired ninja with the mismatched eyes stared back at him defiantly, a definitively haughty look crossing his aristocratic features.

Yushin laughed. Yuto smiled. A brutal, salivatory grin. His dark eyes traveled down and then up the ANBU's finely muscled frame. The hand squeezing the boy's cheeks tightened, something like eagerness brightening the man's face. 

"Well," he said mockingly, bringing his face less than an inch away from the ANBU's, "Then I guess you know what happens next..."

The boy sprawled on the floor between the two Iwa-nin tried to laugh through a mouthful of blood. The laughter started hitching, curtailing into a fragile, pathetic whimper as the two Iwa-nin pummeled and pinned him roughly into the floor. Taking turns causing hurts. They guffawed and chortled as he struggled, as his movements became more  and more desperate and frustrated. Distraught.

Hopeless.

When the sounds of ripping fabric and the ANBU's hoarse crying began to fill the flat starless night, Iruka finally felt himself sharpen to ice.

He'd never killed before... But, by Kami, that was about to fucking change.

 ...

 Quite suddenly it struck him fully.

Yotu's hand that wasn't busy pinning Kakashi's wrists over his head moved, unhurriedly. Almost casually. It unfastened the clasps on the sides his armor-plated vest. Peeled it from him, strings of blood snapping in the air as it was torn loose.

Tossed to the side of the small, dimly lit cabin that'd become a mausoleum. Kakashi tried to take in one good breath. He tried again. 

Again.

Yoshin's hands were moving too. They started grabbing at the fabric of his pants where it bagged a little around his knees. Kakashi's chest felt like it was bursting. Dissolving in a wash of stinging acid.

Both of them were laughing.

Kakashi started thrashing again. True fear sprouting furry feelers, enunciating every sensation in his subjected, beaten body. He started twisting. Bucking. Whipping his head to and fro, jerking his arms and legs, swiveling his hips-But he was laughing too.

It was kind of funny. He hadn't been able to save his friends. Now, he was about to be raped in front of their mutilated corpses as recompense.

Everyone that wasn't dead was laughing. 

At first.

But, at almost exactly the same instant-when Yoshin had wrestled his trousers off his hips and over his knees, and Yotu had shimmied the inky fabric of his tank top up over his head; Kakashi's laughter flipped to weeping.

"There it is." Yotu murmured almost lovingly as he peeled the Copy-Ninja's shirt from him, no longer pinning the boy's wrists to the floor. He leaned in close to whisper in the jounin's ear, lips brushing his soft skin. Earning a submissive, downcast eyed little shiver that was a helpless as it was despairing.

" _Let's give your friends a show, shall we_?"

Kakashi's hands balled together in a knot over his heart, as if to hold himself from breaking, but, at these words, all resistance melted completely away. 

Yotu stood up, recognizing the boy's almost silent tears as a signal of defeat. He stepped off, looking at Yoshin with a triumphant smirk. The only sounds in the cabin were Kakashi's quiet, wracking sobs and the soft spitting of the torches.

 _I... I deserve this_. Kakashi spiraled internally.

"You deserve this." Yoshin told him.

And then the soft grey cotton of his boxer-briefs were being tugged. Not down, but away from him. Hard. Hard enough to tear. 

"I..." Kakashi shut his eyes to the hungry faces of his attackers, to the dead stares of his murdered comrades. His soft voice wavered, " _I'm sorry._.."

...

Iruka had one chance. And, he took it.

One moment the two men were hunched over, crowding the pale, unmoving form of the last surviving ANBU.

The next-there were two more dead bodies bleeding sluggishly out onto the floorboards from where kunai jutted incongruously from the corner of their necks. 

 Iruka hopped in through the window and took in the scene fully for the first time, looking around him in horror. The snapping cough of the burning torches cast the gruesome scene in an almost hellish light. 

There was only the sound of broken breathing and the reel of crickets chirping from outside. Iruka stepped carefully over to the ANBU, and immediately felt a pang of sympathy so keen it brought him sinking to his knees.

"H-Hey..."

His own voice was a little ragged. Dismayed. Thoroughly upset but he was doing his best not to show it.

The silver haired boy was for all intents and purposes naked. One of his sandals had been taken off, but he still had the other mostly fastened around his ankle, and it was the only thing keeping his pants from having been removed completely too. At the sound of the two Iwa-ninja being struck, and then each of them collapsing almost instantaneously, he had managed to roll onto his side and open his eyes.

Now, the silver haired boy with the face of a tortured angel was looking at him blearily, and not a little bit fearfully, through those thickly lashed red and black eyes. A single tear was left, balancing improbably over the bridge of his nose. He watched Iruka as the chunin shuffled closer.

"W-Wuh-"

But the boy couldn't talk. An enormous shudder echoed through him, every part of his body shivering, and then the boy's hands slowly began to drift lower. As if the fact that he was naked and lying on a blood-covered floor surrounded by dead bodies had only just began to reach him when he looked into Iruka's eyes.

"It's okay..." Iruka whispered, something about the torn open, gutted look in the ANBU's eyes making him want to speak quietly.

 _'You're safe now._ '

Something in the blood-smeared boy's face was struck by these words. But still he seemed unable to move.

Iruka reached towards him, earning another flinch, but didn't stop until he'd grabbed the ANBU's black pants and tugged them back up over the boy's ass-and then he gathered the silver haired boy halfway into his lap and held him firmly.

Tentative fingers curled along the collar to Iruka's vest. The boy allowed himself to be held for several minutes, still breathing raggedly, an endless army of tears spilling form his solitary red eye. Iruka brushed blood-stiffened strands of pearly silver out of the boy's face. Felt more than saw the boy's face contort in a not understanding frown.

" _Shh... I've got you."_

_'You're safe.'_

_..._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

...

Severed Constellation

...

"Hold on," Iruka gritted out, stepping through the undergrowth firmly, "Just... a little farther."

The night was dark, thick with clouds that scudded over the moon and glimmering with misty chill. He had one arm of the injured ANBU slung over his own shoulder, the narrow blade of the boy's wrist clasped in a hold he feared too harsh in one hand to keep him from sliding off. His other hand he clutched at the boy's waist, the fabric of the black ANBU tank damp and soggy with sweat and blood, slippery beneath his fingertips.

They'd had to leave the silver-haired boy's armor-plated vest back in the outpost now fading quickly behind them. It'd been difficult enough trying to put the discarded tank back on the poor ANBU; there was a blossoming collection of tell-tale bruises forming over the boy's ribs, indicating some deep muscle tears at best and some broken bones at worse. 

Iruka glanced sideways at the mysterious stranger leaning on him. 

He was heavier than he looked, every inch of him svelte in the extreme and yet compact-the sort of muscle one gets from training past the point of agony every time. And then some.

Right now though, if the sunken look to the boy's mismatched, fluttering eyes and the almost drunken sway of his feet were anything to judge by-all the endurance training in the world wouldn't be enough to keep him conscious.

For, it was impossible to deny, that was exactly what was happening. With each grueling, treacherous step, the ANBU was getting closer to passing out. Iruka bit his lip, a worried frown crossing his tanned face as the silver-haired boy's head lolled and came to a rest on the chunin's shoulder.

The pale skin of his temple where it rested on Iruka's arm was searing hot, even through the fabric of his shirt. Dripping sweat. Scorching.

His mask was still down. Blood dripping ceaselessly from the corner of his airless looking lips, blood clumped in the fringe of his incongruously dark lashes. Dark like the eyes of a horse or a bird. Iruka slyly took in the sleek angle of a bruised cheekbone, the beckoning lilt to full, snowy brows; the straight bridge of a nose that was upturned ever so slightly at the end. The fragile tip of an ear where it poked out through the blood-stained mess of hair so silver it was almost white.

Iruka felt his own skin warming, and quickly looked away.

There was no doubt about it, now that he'd gotten a closer look-this was no ordinary ANBU he'd run into tonight.

The young man pressed weakly to his side now, leaning on the chunin for support, a glistening trickle of tears streaming down one cheek from the scarred nightmare of one red eye-he was a legend.

Cloaked by intrigue and the hushed, guilty whispers of tragedy; it was a shock to encounter him corporeal. In real flesh and blood-too much, too much blood-rather than the gossipy rendition of an ill-fated rumor. 

Copy-Ninja no Hatake Kakashi.

"Are we..." The low, gentle cadence of the jounin's voice surprised him somehow, "Are we out?"

Iruka didn't know what he was talking about. But the silver-haired legend had stopped moving forwards. He looked at the ANBU worriedly. Let his arm slide from his shoulder and tried to help the jounin stand on his own two feet.

' _Take it easy.'_ he wanted to say. Or, ' _Don't worry, everything's gonna be okay.'_

But, with what had to be a tremendous amount of effort, Kakashi managed, swaying where he stood, to lift his bloodied chin and stare directly into Iruka's eyes.The ANBU's voice caught and he stuttered, lips quivering the finest edge, and an almost childish look of misery gleamed wetly from his carnival red and black eyes. His hands were clutching again at his chest, fingers curling helplessly over protruding collarbones that rose and fell raggedly. 

An icy wind blew over them both, sweeping from behind the Copy-Ninja and bringing a cacophony of rattling dried leaves with it. The feathery paleness of the boy's hair whipped between them, falling into his face and snapping in the wind before that heart-wrenching stare. Iruka could only stare back at him, heart locked in a frozen vault somewhere deep in his chest.

Kakashi's face crumpled a little. His damp-lashed eyes brightening as a small, choked sounding sob wrestled its way out in the form of a small hiccup. The battered boy's knees gave out suddenly, and he fell forwards into Iruka, arms crushed between them like a child seeking comfort. 

"Oof."

Iruka caught him just in time, hands cupping the other boy's elbows reflexively, as he sunk down with him. The freezing cold metal of the silver-haired teen's forehead protector met with Iruka's gasping mouth, and Kakashi's entire body shivered as it folded into Iruka's warmth.

"Are we _out_ of that place?"

The Copy-Ninja's voice cracked and Iruka's heart was struck like a gong. 

The bleeding legend in his arms wilted into unconsciousness, and Iruka was left alone in the dark night, the echo of Kakashi's hoarse crying from earlier still ringing like a summons in his ears.

...

* * *

 

...

 Dawn broke in buttery, gold waves that slatted in through the wooden planks of the cottage walls, illuminating the inside with a soft nectar-like glow. 

There was an old, dusty fireplace along the wall to the right of the front door, fashioned from a rustic mosaic of crumbling apricot and ruby bricks. A low fire chuckled warmly in the iron grating, having grown smaller over the long course of the early morning. The occasional pop of water evaporating into steam, still trapped inside the greener of the hastily chopped logs, mingled cozily with the trilling of crickets that greeted the morning dew outside.

Directly in front of the orange-lit, ponderously muttering fireplace, a solitary, moth-eaten mattress that looked to have seen better days lay strewn upon the floor. It'd been covered with a motley of fuzzy, multi-colored afghans and quilts that gave the unique impression that they were home-made; by what could only have been a blind person, the patterns were so eclectic it couldn't have been intentional.

Or, at least that was the conclusion Iruka had been forced to admit. After staring at it vacantly for the last forty-five minutes.

Lying on his side on the old mattress, elbow propping up his head, Iruka watched the slow, _almost too slow_ he worried, rise and fall of Kakashi's quilt-covered shoulder. He'd been sleeping soundly for the last three hours, swaddled in covers that Iruka had wrapped him in, in the hopes of breaking the poor boy's fever.

Iruka frowned a little at the thought and he reached an arm over to place the back of his hand ever so lightly upon the jounin's cheek. Heat still radiated off him in waves, but he thought maybe it might have lessened a little. It was hard to tell.

The chunin rolled over with a sigh onto his back and crossed his hands over his stomach, determined to wait patiently for Kakashi to wake without any interference from him. His soft, brown eyes roved the ceiling, taking in the bizarre assortment of what appeared to be old, powdery bottle-caps that'd been glued in puzzling lines upon the aged wood. The longer he stared, the closer he felt he was to making sense of the full picture, but, as his eyes grew distant and his thoughts turned inwards, the inclination faded.

What had happened?

That was the thought he kept returning to and, like the inevitable turn of a whirling carousel, Iruka could not fail to return to the start. 

How had Kakashi gotten there? Trapped, beaten bloody, and for all intents and purposes naked between the cruel claws of two sadistic Iwa-nin. His team...

Iruka looked over at the Copy-Ninja again, taking in the messy spill of his silver hair. Hair that'd been soaked through and then dried into rusty red clumps that would have been funny looking if it hadn't been blood.

Would Kakashi remember what had happened? The brutal mutilation of his teammates whilst he had been rendered unpredictably helpless-helpless to do anything but watch... And the very real, and very, very close almost rape.

Iruka stared hard into Kakashi's unmasked face, as if he could discern the answers from the jounin's slackened countenance-but the striking, almost exotic features only confused him more. There was something secretive, something just a little bit tragic about the set of the Copy-Ninja's brows, the part of his swollen lips. The terrible, violent scar that drove a frightfully straight line of ropy tissue through one slanted brow, lavender bruised eyelid, and down the expanse of one soft, pale cheek.

A scar that could rival his own.

"What have you gone through..." he murmured, blinking sadly as he rolled back over onto his side. 

Everyone knew about the Copy-Ninja: only child of the White Fang, a legendary shinobi that'd been on par with the three sannin before his-as colloquial rumor told it-unfortunate dishonor to the Village andthen  consequential slow, fade-out from the public; student of the Yondaime; lone survivor of his genin team and... now, the sole survivor of his ANBU team as well.

It seemed that, for every snippet Iruka had gleaned about the strange, aloof boy with the staggeringly beautiful eyes and hidden face, there were several questions that sprung up in their place.

Suddenly, as if the bend of Iruka's thoughts had alerted him-wrestled him from a deeper sleep into the shallows-Kakashi made a small noise and kicked his feet a little in the blankets. 

Not wanting him to rouse before he'd rested fully, the chunin reached over to brush the fine, wooly tufts of silvery hair from where they'd spilled along the ANBU's cheek. 

" _Shhh..._ "

He breathed quietly, petting the other boy in what he hoped was a soothing touch. Stomach clinking into unwarranted knots of some faceless emotion he couldn't quite place.

Kakashi flinched. It was a terrible flinch, jolting his whole body from head to toe. 

Iruka snapped his hand back, clutching it into an anxious ball beneath his chin, and stared at the half-asleep jounin fixedly, willing every muscle in his body to be exactly still.

But, the damage had been done, and now, as a distressed little frown began to grow between the Copy-Ninja's brows and an almost despairing angle came over the part of his dehydrated lips, Iruka wasn't sure what to do.

"Mmnn..." Kakashi moaned, and his arms twitched belatedly, as if tying to fend someone off in his sleep. He moaned again, this time higher.

There was an unmistakable note of panic building in the wounded boy's voice. A sort of frantic desperation to the sleepy little movements, as the silver-haired boy appeared to be battling with his quilts.

Kakashi was having a nightmare, Iruka realized with a resonating pang... A nightmare that seemed awfully reluctant to release its dagger-clawed grip on him.

 "N-no..." Kakashi mumbled, and suddenly the scarred eyelid that hid his Sharingan was wet and dripping with overflowing tears, "Don't!"

Iruka couldn't watch it any longer-He had to do something. 

Without thinking, he did the only thing he could. Scooting up closer to the prone, weakly thrashing jounin, he took a deep breath and lined his front up with Kakashi's back. Enveloped the crying boy firmly in his arms and, brown eyes closing with fierceness, he clutched the too-hot, lanky sprawl of tangled blankets and limbs firmly to the center of his chest.

The Copy-Ninja woke with a ragged scream.

...

* * *

 

...

  _"Please!"  Six year old Kakashi cried, wandering brokenly down the crowded street, "Help! Help me, please!"_

_No one seemed to hear him. Dark, shadowy forms weaved around him seamlessly, all of them striding with rushed, purposeful steps to some obscure destination._

_Kakashi whipped his head around, looking up at the tall figures through watery eyes, trying very hard not to cry._

_Why wasn't anybody stopping?_

_Couldn't they see that he'd broken his arm clean off?_

_Stumbling in his upset state, six year old Kakashi tried his best to hold onto his detached arm. It kept trying to wriggle and hop away._

_"PLEASE!" he yelled this time, roaring, "Help!!!"_

_But the only shadows that seemed to notice were the ones that watched him through the chaotic frenzy of the passing crowd with cold, jeering eyes._

_Kakashi dropped his arm right on the ground when he saw them, two of them, begin to zip towards him as if pulled by an invisible string._

_"Aaah!"_

_He turned around, about to try and make a mad dash for it, but-before he could take a full step in any direction-they were_ there _, catching him  and tearing at him with their great talons._

_"No!" he yelped, as their shadowy forms fell on him._

_Their cold eyes bored deeply into his own, and six year old Kakashi was helpless to look away. The talons started  to snip his clothes from him like overly large scissors. Kakashi screamed again, thrashing in fright._

_"Don't!"_

_But, he was already caught-he was already caught and-_

"Hey!" 

_They were shaking him so roughly, everything hurt, it-_

"Hey! It's okay!" a clear voice was yelling, "It's okay! You're okay-"

Kakashi's multi-colored stare snapped open sightlessly and, with a jolt, he was back in his nineteen year old body. Snarled and twisted in blankets between the grounding crush of two strong arms that pressed him back against a warm, strong chest.

The sobbing that erupted from him suddenly was alarming. Out of control and scary.

It burst from the throbbing, trapped pit of his chest and shook his entire body with each hitched breath that escaped him.

He was hurt-trapped, he was hurting so bad and he couldn't break free of the arms that encircled him.

"Easy..." The clear voice had stopped yelling, "Just take it easy..."

But, Kakashi couldn't take it easy. Half remembered images flew like the aberrant flap of raven wings across his vision, mingling with the disjointed upheaval of the present and the trailing smoke of his nightmare.

He twisted, and the sharp movement brought with it a debilitating pain  from his ribs that, as it rolled through him with all the unmitigated force of a felled tree, seized his lungs in a vice-like grip and stole the breath from him.

"Kakashi." The smooth voice was saying gently, the arms that held him loosening and revealing themselves not to be talons at all, "Kakashi, listen to me. You are safe... You're safe, okay?"

The ability to breath came back to him slowly and, if the small wail of hurt and confused fear that arrived with it was unfit for a shinobi of his ranking, then he was too exhausted to notice.

He lay there in those warm arms, staring straight forward, blinking hard at the tears smearing his vision, and struggled to catch his breath. 

"Shh... Shhhh..." 

There was warm, toasty breath along the back of his neck. It made his aching body shiver as a wave of chill swept through him. Gods, did it hurt-everything from the top of his head to his toes was pounding, almost humming with pain. Even shivering hurt.

Kakashi started to cry weakly again, disoriented by the sudden awareness of all his injuries. 

The arms holding him shifted a little. Suddenly there was a hand, a warm and slightly sweaty hand that was tan and sturdy looking in the gilded morning light. It rolled, the back of it moving to brush gently-so very, very gently- over the unmasked skin of his cheek.

"Hey..." the soft voice issued quietly from the chest pressed snugly up behind him, accompanying the petting hand and matching it in gentleness, "Don't cry..."

And then Kakashi did something that would have surprised him-no, shocked him-if he had been fully alert.

He fell back asleep. Drifting off easily into a snuggled embrace, lulled into drowsing by the steady repetition of that soft hand, and even softer voice-His was a sleep without dreams.

By the time he woke up again, his eyes blurry and itchy with dried tears, he was alone in his mess of quilts.

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

...

_Severed Constellation_

...

"Shoo."

Iruka glared at the small grasshopper that'd sprung unexpectedly onto the strap of his sandal. He waggled his foot a little, concentrating fiercely on the crucial task of not dropping the enormous pail of sloshing water he'd just pumped from the squat, pinkish stone well nestled behind the rustic walls of the cottage. 

Morning had struck with full force, the late autumn sun beaming down brilliantly through the knobby fingers of the trees surrounding. Squinting up at the cloudless sky, the dark scar slashed across the bridge of his nose wrinkling, Iruka took in the way the branches seemed to almost grasp at the emptiness of the pale blue above him. It reminded him somehow of how Kakashi's hands had looked, so slim and long, clutching artlessly at the jumping rise and fall of his collarbones. The disoriented sparkle of barely contained distress in the other boy's solitary dark eye that'd somehow captured the liquid starlight of the stars that'd been disturbingly missing the entire stretch of last night. 

Iruka tripped over his own foot and scraped his shin on the root of a low grown shrub. 

"Ow! Kami." he adjusted his grip on the pail and, sloshing a trickle of cold water over his shoulder and back, he winced and trudged stolidly around the flank of the small dwelling. Right. Best not to think too hard about things like sweat dampened collarbones and eyes that were lashed like a fawn's while he was carrying something.

Iruka leaned into the slightly crooked front door with his back, balancing the overfull bucket of water precariously in his arms, and turned around to fully enter the dim cottage-only to send another heaping splash spattering onto the dusty wooden floor when he looked up and saw a pair of slitted garnet and ink colored eyes blinking back at him slowly. 

"Oh!" he said rather dumbly, standing there for a minute with the teetering silver container wobbling low between his knees before he lowered it and set it down with another ill-timed splash.

'You're awake.'

Kakashi Hatake regarded him silently for a moment and the chunin felt an unreasonable sense of nervousness at the scrutiny. For-there was really no other way to describe it-something about the other's dual-chromatic stare was chilling. Aloof and alien in the distance of it's circumspection; mystically intuitive and blatantly primal-no, barbaric-in the dissection of it's target. 

Iruka let out a slow, almost shaky breath, feeling himself become tense. What was it those otherworldy eyes were seeing? 

The bedridden shinobi tilted his head to one side weakly, still staring at Iruka, and coughed a little. Gathering his elbows tighter in to his sides, he tried to prop himself up on the ratty mattress but he caught himself with a soft hiss, hypnotic eyes shutting briefly-abruptly releasing Iruka from the unsettling clasp of their icy spell. 

"Yeah, might be best to take it slow." The brunette murmured, fetching his discarded flask from the pile of gear he'd hastily left on the floor beside the mattress. He filled it from the bucket before handing it to Kakashi swiftly, "Here." he said, "You must be thirsty."

But Kakashi's bloodless fingers were clumsy and slow, the flask starting to slide from his hold as soon as he grasped it. Iruka caught it smoothly, a faint crease of worry forming between his brows, as he helped the elite ANBU guide the drink to his lips, cupping a hand protectively under the back of the jonin's neck. The touch of the silver-haired teen's skin, steamy hot and damp with cooled sweat against the rough skin of Iruka's palm was discomfiting. Impossibly smooth and silken. Fragile. And, something-the chunin swallowed dryly-something about the way Kakashi's lips were shaped in an unconscious pout, one corner of his mouth still smeary with blood; and how they parted eagerly for the neck of the water bottle: it turned Iruka's groin to molten jello. 

Iruka forced his hand to hold steady, resisting his body's bizarre inclination to shake. 

It just wasn't right. How someone could look so simultaneously venereal and helpless. 

Someone as powerful and illustrious as the legendary Copy-ninja should never look so... Iruka frowned. Watched as the other teen gulped the water down in rushed, eager swallows, eyes shut tight. 

"W-Woah," Iruka stuttered when Kakashi's hands caught him by surprise, reaching up lightly to frame his own in a vain attempt to tilt the flask back even further, "Don't push it now. _There_... Nice and easy."

 _So human_.

Iruka suddenly realized that one of Kakashi's eyes was open and staring directly at him. And how close they were. With a rather unceremonious jolt, he retracted the water bottle hastily, something about the murky swathes of nebulous grey and burnished silver that he saw shining at him plaintively from the obscure depths of the jonin's unscarred eye frightening him. 

The slender length of the water flask slid from between the Copy-ninja's lips with a barely audible pop. Kakashi panted, falling back onto the mattress heavily, the crook of his neck still propped a little by the cradle of Iruka's hand. His adam's apple jumped as he swallowed, droplets of escaped water sliding down the smooth curve of his chin and onto the exposed, milky column of his throat.  

Iruka quickly withdrew his hand. 

There was a stiff silence as Kakashi panted, regarding him cooly from beneath one hooded eyelid. And then, with no warning, not even a word spoken, Iruka was startled by the jonin stretching towards him for the flask again.

"Hey." Iruka frowned, shifting back on his heels just out of reach instinctively. Kakashi kept pawing after it, and Iruka snapped, catching the silver-haired boy's wrist angrily, " _Hey_! Cool it."

The world-class shinobi, master of over a thousand jutsu glared right back at him furiously. A thin sort of rosy red had begun to pool across pale, bruise-swollen cheeks, and Iruka's eyes widened when he saw a sharp glimmer of tears shining back at him from Kakashi's mismatched irises.

The ANBU's slender forearm was still snagged in Iruka's fist. Kakashi's eyes narrowed, catlike. Incensed. 

"Ready to finish what you started?" he breathed.

Iruka recoiled, dumbstruck. Threw aside the jonin's captured wrist like it'd burned him.

"What are you saying?"

Kakashi winced, pulling his wrist into his chest and massaging it, breathing heavily. There was something off about the way he was looking at Iruka, something sharp and-

"Kept me alive so you could finish the job." Kakashi grunted, struggling again to prop himself up on the dingy mattress. Iruka, concerned he might make his injuries worse, lunged forwards to press the ANBU back to the bed reactively.

The resulting cry of pain and dry, weary fright alarmed him. 

"N-no," Kakashi choked, "don't..." He pleaded in a voice so ragged, so thin it scorched Iruka's heart. The Copy-ninja tried to scoot away from him weakly, those mesmerizing features twisting into an expression of sickened dread. 

" _Please_! Don't touch me!"

Iruka let go of him quickly, sudden understanding crashing through him like a barrage of solid waves.

Kakashi didn't recognize him.

...

* * *

 

...

 His weapons were out of reach and he was injured. 

Kakashi fought to control his breathing, both eyes swiveling rapidly in an instinctive bid to locate some way to defend himself. His panicked gaze snagged on an ashy black-iron fire poker resting carelessly on the floor beside the fireplace grating. It was just out of arms reach.

He'd have to be fast.

"Don't move!"

The brown eyed boy with the ponytail and the split-faced scar raised a threatening hand. Kakashi tensed and readied to spring, but a fiery bolt of agony stabbed through his shoulder, back, and ribs; he faltered, momentarily debilitated. 

But only for a hair thin fraction of a second. 

His captor followed his eyes, saw the precariously placed fire poker-Read the intention that hung implicit. 

"Oh, no," brown eyes tightened, the mouth beneath the horizontal scar thinning, "Don't you even think-"

The Copy-ninja chose his moment with preternatural accuracy. Rocking back onto his shoulders, teeth bearing down fiercely on his already bloodied lip as he ignored the white-hot pain this caused; Kakashi shucked off his covers, swung both his feet in a wild, serpent quick arc over his head and, using his momentum, catapulted himself bodily from the mattress.

The pony-tailed boy caught him mid-leap, surprisingly strong shoulders connecting with Kakashi's gut like a charging anvil. 

"Guh-Mmnf!"

The Copy-ninja was crushed to the floor, a thin puff of dust rising as he was slammed down, pinned beneath the other boy's weight. His outstretched fingertips were less than an inch from their intended target, quivering with the strain. 

"Stop! You'll hurt-" the brown eyed boy was saying, but the young ANBU's pulse was a swelling tide in his ears that drowned the rest of his words out. Kakashi began to thrash blindly, his lungs trapped in a vice of a stinging ice. 

_'Hungry Konoha slut.'_

His attacker moved suddenly over him. Kakashi cringed, bruised cheek pressed roughly to the wooden grain and gasped. His disparate eyes snapped open pale wide.This was it. He had no other option. He twisted and, with a liquid snarl, bit down _hard_ on the other boy's wrist before he could be struck across the head.

But the hit never came. Nor did any cry of anger or pain. 

Kakashi, who had screwed his eyes shut in anticipation of a numbing blow, teeth clamped down with all his might on the exposed flesh of the stranger's arm, froze. Pried one eye partways open. 

And immediately questioned everything.

...

* * *

 

...

Compassion like a honey river poured stickily through Iruka's chest as he stared directly into the eyes of a wild, abused animal. 

It was hard to believe that the boy digging his slightly sharper than average incisors into the unprotected meat of the chunin's forearm had made the bingo books at fourteen. With his shaggy, untended silver locks falling into his eyes and his nose wrinkled with the force of his bite, the legendary Copy-Ninja looked more like a feisty, battered street kitten to Iruka than any real threat.

The chunin felt a small, soft smile bud on his lips despite how his brows were quirked in pain.

"See..." he exhaled in an uneven rush, and Kakashi's contrasting eyes widened in shock, "You have nothing to fear from me."

The fierce pressure on his arm lessened fractionally. Iruka was distantly aware that he was bleeding, but forced himself to hold the other boy's uncertain gaze. Feeling uncharacteristically bold, but mostly overwhelmed by a sweeping roll of pity, he raised his other hand to touch one soft, pale cheek. 

He stroked the edge of his thumb against Kakashi's face as lightly as he dared. 

"It's okay if you don't remember." he said gently, watching as the startled creature beneath him blinked his dark lashes in disbelieving confusion at his words. The teeth baring into Iruka's arm slowly relinquished their pressure, no longer biting him, but only pressing against him amidst the silky heat of the silver-haired boy's lips and open mouth.

Iruka flipped his hand to stroke the ANBU's cheek again, this time with the back of his hand. Kakashi flinched, eyes almost closing.

"I was there last night." Iruka said, "I saw what those Iwa-nin were doing to you... to your team. And, I..."

He gently pulled his arm free of the silver-haired prodigy's mouth. Watched Kakashi's alarmed, still wild eyes shine back at him through a potent mixture of vulnerability and uncomprehending relief. Iruka cradled Kakashi's bloodied, too-hot face between his palms and met his stare steadily.

'I killed them dead.'

...

* * *

 

...

It was an indeterminate stretch of time past noon. 

The cheery sun outside had, over the course of the morning, been dulled to a cloudy interpretation of itself as an evening storm began to sift through the woods. The cabin windows rattled faintly beneath the drumming pitter-patter of the rain, the leaves on the trees outside bobbing in a restless wind. 

"I can't get it."

Iruka glanced over his shoulder from where he was crouched before the low fireplace, stirring a careful collection of healing herbs and honey into a large pot of water that hung snugly over the toasty flames. His breath caught. Kakashi was laid out on his back, long limbed and awkward, along a small spread of the cleanest linens the chunin could find. He appeared to be having difficulty disentangling himself from his shirt-the slippery fabric was caught around his wrists and shucked up around his shoulders, covering the teen's trademark wintery locks and unsettlingly beautiful face.

 The jounin's frustration was as palpable as steam. Iruka bit his lip and bit his lip _hard._

There was absolutely no way in hell that laughing at Kakashi might improve their situation in the slightest. But, Iruka had to admit, there was an odd sort of adorableness about the way the other boy was trapped in his partially removed shirt like this. But, the longer he stared and did nothing, the smaller and smaller any amount of trust the Copy-Ninja might have in him would become so, steeling himself with a deep breath, Iruka trod carefully over.

"Here." he said in what he hoped approximated a relatively normal sounding voice, "Let me help you."

Kakashi whined through his taut black shirt quietly, so quietly that Iruka almost didn't hear it, but he finally stopped moving and simply lay there in his undignified pose. Iruka dropped to his knees behind the other boy. Kakashi flinched when he felt the reverberation in the floor beneath him. And, then he started shaking. 

It was very fine, accompanied by a spurt of uneven breathing from his bruised chest, but a trembling nevertheless it was. Seeing Kakashi's evident fear of him sent a dismantlingly fierce pang of hurt through him, and Iruka moved as slowly as he could, trying not to make anything worse than it already was.

"T-take it off already."

Kakashi had evidently had enough of being trapped and unable to see, but the low brusque order that his voice tried to carry broke with his nervous stutter. Iruka's heart clogged stickily in his chest and he moved closer to the jounin. 

 Curling his fingers round the bottom edge of the bloodied tank, Iruka began to peel it up over the other boy's body. The rushed cadence of the Copy-Ninja's breath reached a point of almost delirious panic, and then, with a wet shuck of the sodden fabric over his face, Iruka had pulled the shirt free. 

Kakashi's breathing relaxed and he glanced once up at Iruka's face, remnants of his poignantly worried expression still evident in the wide mismatched eyes, but then he looked pointedly away. His arms folded over his chest almost vacantly, as if he weren't really aware of himself doing it. He was still shaking, barely. 

Iruka watched the jounin's gaze travel awkwardly downwards, noting the small swallow of the other boy's throat with a growing uneasiness. Kakashi looked one buck shy of a full, hastily made retreat and Iruka was suddenly having his doubts about this as well.

But, there was no other way around it. The silver-haired teen was covered in wounds and the longer they went untreated, the greater the risk of infection would be.

"I..." Iruka tugged at his ponytail and tried to smile disarmingly, "I guess we'll have to work together on this. I've already got the water boiled with some antibacterial herbs that should even dull the pain a little. All we have to do is..."

He trailed off and looked away from Kakashi, who was still avoiding his gaze, choosing that moment to untie his hair and redo his ponytail completely. His hands were shaking more than a little themselves at the thought of what he had to do next.

"Get me naked..." 

Kakashi finished for him in a ragged voice that came out sounding more small than dry. Iruka's heart clenched and all of a sudden the interior of the entire cabin was a few degrees hotter. That's right, the Iwa-nin had tore Kakashi's underwear to shreds last night. The thin, stretchy black fabric of his ANBU pants was all he had on now.

 _This must be so hard for him_ , Iruka thought to himself with a sigh, _after all that's happened it's probably the last thing he wants to do right now_. 

"Right." Iruka's voice creaked and, having finished correcting his ponytail he pinched his bottom lip, staring blankly at the floor by his bent knees, "Okay."

But, he didn't move from that position at all, feeling a colossal sense of pressure settling over his shoulders steadily, and he stared harder than ever at the dusty floorboards. Shit. 

Shit. Shit. Shit.

How was he going to do this? How could he even begin to put the beautiful creature before him in an even deeper sense of helplessness. As a jounin, as an ANBU no less, having to be undressed completely by the fellow soldier who'd rescued you, after very nearly having been brutally raped, well... No wonder Kakashi was shaking. 

He had already divested the silver-haired boy of his boots, and there were no other sheets clean apart from the one he'd laid beneath Kakashi. Not even the filmiest sense of modesty was available here. And-of course-the person he was to be performing medical duties on was unarguably and staggeringly beautiful in a way that was impossible not to notice.

But, the longer he put it off, the more the Copy-Ninja's shaking seemed to increase, as the prospect of being, again, so utterly helpless at the hands of a stranger he'd only just met grew heavier in both their minds. And, with that, Iruka found his courage.

Kakashi's hands had found the nooks of his collarbones again, and he was curling his fingers and toes, seemingly fighting the urge to squirm. He was looking down at himself in a way that seemed frightfully young and innocent. And, at the diminutive behavior, the chunin had to wonder, and then instantly berate himself for wondering, just how much experience the legend in front of him had. As far as he knew what they were about to do was standard treatment, in accordance with protocol. 

Rescue. Perform first aid. Go back to village. File a report. Send out a team to collect the bodies...

"I-" the ANBU's voice caught and he had to start again, "I'll just close my eyes, shall I?"

"S-sure." 

Iruka didn't know what to say to that. He could only guess at the sheer force of will it must be taking for him to even allow this. Especially in the face of the fact that said patient had nearly gnawed a hole in Iruka's arm not but a few moments ago out of what could only be pure terror.

 Kakashi's mismatched eyes fluttered closed, but only barely, the thick fringe of his eyelashes quivering slightly in the soft light of the fireplace. He swallowed again and then seemed to hold his breath.

Knowing that it was now or never, Iruka took a subtle deep breath of his own, trying not to show his own nervousness too much, and he scooted to a kneel by Kakashi's hips. The poor boy was so lacerated and bruised that the majority of his skin had begun to bloom in ghastly purplish lumps, almost as dark as tattoos. This would take much more than a quick first aid, the Copy-Ninja would have to go to the hospital as soon as they made it back to the village center. No doubt about it.

Iruka's hands fumbled against the flat dip of Kakashi's belly, reaching for the hem of his pants, and the other boy gasped at the contact. The chunin froze.

"Okay?" he forced his voice into some resemblance of steadiness and immediately wondered if he shouldn't have said anything. 

"Kay." 

Kakashi was barely breathing, his eyes screwing shut just that much tighter, his jaw flexing and arms crossing over each other suddenly as he grasped weakly at his shoulders. It was now or never.

The pads of Iruka's fingers, calloused form hard work, drifted to the hem of Kakashi's tight, slippery black pants. He grasped the waistline firmly in his fingers and, not wanting to yank them, began to slowly roll them downwards.

"Wait!" And, Kakashi's hands skated over his before gripping at his wrists ineffectually. But, as small as the strength was in the touch, Iruka released his grip on Kakashi's pants immediately, his gaze shooting up to the other boy's face. Kakashi's eyes were open.

" _I can't do this_!"

 Horror clanged through Iruka like a siren and he withdrew from the silver-haired boy as quick as a blink. Shit. Kakashi had started to cry. 

It was a helpless, weary sort of crying, but a crying none the less. Made not in the least more pathetic by the gravelly, raw sound of his strained voice. Like he'd almost lost his voice from all the screaming the night before. It plucked at the chunin's heartstrings, wrangling a painful tune that reverberated along the very inside of his skull. 

Kakashi had the worst cry in the world, it was so helpless and small. Almost as if it were too hurt, too scared to make much a matter of itself, it was more of a shuddered, wet gasping than any dramatic deluge of weeping. Witnessing it broke Iruka's heart.

 "Kakashi..." For the first time Iruka murmured the other boy's name, "I-"

"-Please. Please, I can't-"

But, even as his words pushed Iruka away, Kakashi had rolled over onto his side and begun to reach for Iruka.

And, that was when it happened.

All of Iruka's world came crashing down, slivered into the sharpest of points-one swirling red point with three circling tomoes to be exact. Everything else was a steamy cloud of pulsing mist and feeling. 

The chunin crawled atop the other boy; Kakashi's cold fingertips touched Iruka's temples and, sending electric volts through the hairs that'd slipped free of his ponytail, his lips washed like soft, simmering waves of magnetic heat against the silver-haired boy's forehead, nose, cheeks, and throat before sliding with a wild tingle over the pliant silkiness of Kakashi's bruise swollen lips.

 He could hardly control his hands. They drifted over the crying boy's cold, wet cheeks, tousling through his mess of blood-spattered hair, and caressing the thin skin on the sides of Kakashi's neck. The pulse there fluttered like the frail wingbeats of a startled bird.

 His mouth followed his hands, humming as it glided a gentle trail of warmth along the other boy's cold, bruised skin. Kakashi shuddered, his mouth falling open in a gasp, and then Iruka was kissing him.

Kissing him as tenderly as he could, tasting the salt of the Copy-Ninja's tears and blood even as he was enveloped by the boyish, woodsy smell of him. Iruka's hands wandered lower and there was electricity tingling against his fingertips wherever they met Kakashi's skin. Iruka's lips bumped down the other boy's neck and smeared damp heat gently against the very same collarbones that'd been haunting his thoughts. There was a taut, barely contained absence of breathing as Kakashi bit down on a noise that only sounded deep in his throat. The smell of his skin was a musky warmth that only seemed to get stronger the more Iruka touched and tasted him. Iruka's eyes fought to open when his hands connected with the hem of the silver-haired boy's pants again - 

_'Wait!' ... 'I can't do this!'_

Hold on. Kakashi's hands were burrowing themselves in his hair, his ponytail having been thoroughly demolished at some point in the last few seconds. His staggered breath was a hot, pumping mist in Iruka's ear. Wait a second.

_'Please, I can't-'_

A sudden itching discomfort flared through Iruka's entire hands, where they shook, forcibly frozen where they pinched at the lip of Kakashi's already disheveled trousers. It was as if a tremendous molten heat had amassed within him, a need, and it didn't make sense how much exertion he had to muster just to resist the simplest of movements. Almost like he'd been harnessed by some supernatural, indecipherable force of will that bade him to make one small motion, then another, then another, and-

And, hadn't Kakashi said he couldn't do this?

Iruka froze, every muscle in his being quivering with the strain, and he finally opened his eyes. What he saw froze him even further still.

Kakashi was crying silent tears through his lustful gasps, his bare chest terribly, terribly bruised and heaving for oxygen, his lip split and bleeding again. He was moving his hips in a slow, almost helpless roll, one moment pressing hard against Iruka's groin and canting away from it the next. The wicked, hapless motion was slowly wriggling the Copy-Ninja out of his last, solitary article of clothing. 

"Wait." huffed Iruka.

But it was too late, he felt a brush of damp pubic hair against his knuckles and then hot, terribly, terribly smooth skin growing hard to the touch beneath. Kakashi's svelte frame bent as his spine contracted against the sheet covering the hard floor, and-

"-I said, Hold On!"

Iruka roared in anger, finally regaining control back over his body with a snap of ferocious rage. Without thinking he grabbed the slippery mess that'd become the other boy's pants in both fists and, growling furiously, yanked them down all the way to Kakashi's ankles where he trapped them hard against the floor.

"AH!"

The silver-haired boy screamed in undisguisable terror, his arms limp and open by his ears, face mottled with bruises and tears. And, hating himself for doing it but knowing he had no other choice, Iruka lifted the jounin's pant swaddled ankles an inch off the floor and then brought them slamming back down roughly. 

"There!" he crowed, and he knew that he sounded mean, but he was so angry he could hardly control himself, "That!"

He released Kakashi's trapped ankles abruptly, backing away from the other boy and standing up quickly, pacing back and forth.

"What _is_ that?!" he cried, pointing at Kakashi's tear-stricken face, "No! I'm not doing this. I'm not... I'm not... Reenacting whatever sick, fucked up rape fantasy you have going on here!"

The moment he said it, he wished that he hadn't.

The Copy-ninja hiccuped back a sob, hands flying up to cover his face, fingers burying themselves to the root of his wild silvery hair, and his knees bent in a helpless bid to cover himself before he rolled and fell over onto his side, bruised shoulders shuddering. There was no dramatic sound, no furious onslaught of derangement or anger; merely the near silent struggle of embarrassed tears. 

What had he done? 

Iruka's hand found his mouth and he cursed quietly under his breath at the sight before him. With one sentence he'd done this, brought this internationally feared genius of a shinobi to a flinching mess at his feet. Kakashi was gasping for breath. Iruka turned away, tanned hands balling into fists in his loose brown hair, jaw grinding with stress. How could he have done this? What-

-Kakashi's silent sobbing broke, the smallest of choked sounds slipping out. And, it was then Iruka knew he had been tricked.

He turned back around slowly, the ice-felt touch of what could only be pure, molting disgust poking stiff tendrils through his being. 

"You..." he said thickly, eyes widening as he figured it out, raising a hand and pointing at Kakashi's weakly curled, naked frame, "You used your Sharingan on me!"

The silver-haired ANBU cringed in response, but otherwise said nothing, continuing to gasp quietly behind his hands and shake on his side on the sheet beneath him. And, even now, in the most pitiful of moments, Iruka couldn't even begin to argue with the fact that the boy crying and naked before him was so beautiful it didn't make sense. It was dumb in fact. Completely and utterly nonsensical, how simultaneously sexy and pathetic the sight before him was.

He glared at the Copy-ninja who seemed to shrug and shake his messy silver head helplessly. Then, in the smallest, most muffled of voices Iruka heard the jounin speak.

"...Maybe."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter Four

_**"Can We Kiss Forever?" - Kina ft. Adriana Proenza**_

... 

_Severed Constellation_

...

 

"I'm taking a walk." 

The chunin with the scar across his nose said coldly, staring down at him where he was huddled and stripped clean on the floor. Like he was the most disgusting thing the other boy had seen yet.  

Kakashi felt a cold, deep horror stab through him keenly. He hid behind his hands, the bare skin of his legs rubbing against him in the most intimate of areas, making him feel hopelessly exposed. He was sickeningly, shamefully aware of the fact that he was absolutely naked. In every sense.  

And, even worse. He was unarguably-for he couldn't deny the tingling brush of electric heat that pulsed through his veins in time with his throbbing heart-and blatantly; turned on. 

What had just happened? 

But, before the Copy-Ninja could muster the courage to peek above the tips of his fingers, the dark-haired ninja turned and, with a loud crash of the cabin door behind him, stomped out into the forest.

Leaving Kakashi alone, sweating and beads of fresh blood trickling from his wounds, completely undressed and emotionally annihilated, curled up weakly on the sheet on the floor.  

...

* * *

...

 

Iruka's mind raced. 

Sandals clomping heavily through the undergrowth, hands clenching in and out of fists at his sides, he shook his head furiously as he stalked away from the derelict cabin. 

What in Kami's name had just happened?

The chunin's mind warped, skittering back along the fresh track of his memory and then abruptly derailing, careening into waves of chaotic emotion that left him feeling hot-faced, tight-chested, and stricken. 

_'You used your Sharingan on me!'_

_'...Maybe.'_

It was ludicrous. Frenetically and dubiously ridiculous. What had Kakashi been thinking? Iruka's intuitive powers of reasoning floundered at the contrast between the silver-haired boy's words and actions. Swiftly, as he stepped onto a deer trail that winded through some tall grass, the chunin began to analyze what'd just occurred between the two of them. 

_'Wait!'_

The hoarse sound of Kakashi's cry overlapped with the raw, agonized scream he'd heard the two Iwa-nin rend from the ANBU last night in Iruka's mind. It made him feel like he'd caused the same pain, the same distress in the other boy. The boy with wild, messy hair daubed rosy by the dried globs of blood stiffened in his silvery strands. 

There'd been so much blood. 

Looking back through the fogged lens of his recollection now, Iruka could only begin to appreciate the terror and horrified feelings of disgust and helplessness that the jonin had experienced when he'd witnessed the death of his teammates and been unable to save them. He'd heard tail of a rumor before, about the quiet, bland-eyed legend. One that came with a name that, after what he'd witnessed last night, felt copiously harsh and filled Iruka with a feeling of mute dismay.

Hatake Kakashi. The friend-killer. 

Just what sort of monster had he saved?

 

_"Are-Are we out of that place?"_

The soft, undeniably frightened sound of Kakashi's voice bled through Iruka's deliberation. And, he nearly missed a step, tripping over a thick, knobbly root with a hiss. It didn't make sense. How someone so heartless, so manipulative and dangerous, could sound so much like a child. A badly beaten child that could hardly register if the crux of danger had passed or not. Iruka came to a stop in the woods, breathing hard. 

... Kakashi had needed to be told. 

He'd needed verbal assurance that he was safe. That he wasn't about to be hurt anymore... As if he'd gone with Iruka even though part of him fully expected to be hurt by him all the while. It spoke leagues about the jumbled state of mind the silver-haired boy must have been drowning in.  

Iruka looked down at the wet, swollen tooth marks on the side of his wrist. Blinked. 

Kakashi had gone from fearing Iruka was going to rape him to squirming himself heatedly into aspired nudity beneath Iruka's clothed body in hardly the span of a day. 

Just thinking about what had happened between them brought a fresh wave of paradoxical feelings washing over him. Had he really wanted to kiss Kakashi? 

Iruka was a terrible liar, so he didn't even bother trying to disguise the facts from himself. Sighing deeply, he sunk to his haunches against the mossy bark of an old tree. Ran a trembling hand through some brown hairs that'd fallen loose.

 

Truthfully, if he got right down to it... He'd never seen someone so beautiful.

 

Iruka ran a hand down his face haggardly and leaned his head back into the tree. Fuck. 

There was no getting around the exotic sleekness of the other's narrowed features, the sylvan slant of those eyes-one horrifically scarred and glowing a bloodthirsty crimson-or the lithe balance of muscle and jutting bone that was the other boy's toned body.  

Iruka groaned, hitting the back of his head a couple times against the tree for good measure.

So, he was forced to admit it then, not a small amount of his own feeling had genuinely desired Kakashi. Had lusted for him. Even before the jonin had unveiled his wickedness, had tried to mentally control Iruka's emotions through the chilling power of the Sharingan... He supposed he couldn't fully blame the silver-haired boy for what had happened.

Iruka bit his lip. Frowned. 

But, what sort of person did something like that? And why? 

What was it that Kakashi was trying to accomplish by using his mystical eye to tap into Iruka's feelings of carnal hunger and seduction?  

_'Please... I can't-'_

Can't what? Handle the subjugation of having someone forcibly divest you of your clothing, so you went ahead and tried to do it yourself? Iruka gasped, his breath quickening in his ears as a pervasive blush wafted up from his chest to his neck. That was it... It had to be.

Kakashi had broke. He couldn't handle being made to feel anymore helpless, so he did the only thing he could to take back a little control over the situation himself. It had been sly, deceitful and-there was no other word for it, really- _slutty_. But, Iruka thought he could maybe begin to understand a little bit more about the situation.

He rocked forwards back to his feet, standing so quickly he felt dizzy for an instant, and he remembered that neither of them had eaten for at least a day by now. He should really get back...

Cool laced dread sifted quietly through him at the thought, and Iruka shuddered once himself. He may have somewhat managed to sort out the other boy's emotional state leading up to his departure, but-honey brown eyes widened, and he swallowed thickly-but, as for what sort of emotional mess he might find when he returned, he could only begin to imagine.

Iruka cringed, remembering the way he'd shucked Kakashi's pants down to his ankles and banged the slim appendages against the rough cabin floor. And, how he'd left the other boy completely alone and defenseless. Crying. Undressed on the floor like somebody's two-bit whore that'd been taken advantage of and then left for dead.

The chunin took off. Sprinting through the forest. 

...

* * *

 

 ...

 Kakashi's breath shook. His muscles strained, flexing with exertion, his veins popping and his entire body whooshing with pins and needles as he struggled. 

It took all of his strength just to pull his pants up. And, even then he'd only managed to hoist them about midway up his backside. How was he going to get out of here? He had to find his way back to Konoha, and quick-before he either passed out again or the brown eyed boy with the ponytail came back.

The last thing he wanted to see was the disgust in those wide, light colored eyes again. It-

The Copy-ninja couldn't take anymore. He was past his threshold, never really having had much of a capacity for embarrassment and shame in the first place. And, the other boy had already seen his face. Not to mention...

Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut in a mixture of mortification and agony, his ears burning with heat as he struggled to roll from his side to his elbows and knees. He groaned, the shaking in his body thickening until he felt sick with the pain.

"Ah!" he collapsed back onto his side again, injured shoulder and ribs positively clanging with hurt. He gasped for breath. 

There was nothing he could do. He was completely and utterly helpless. Debilitated by injuries, he was as good as dead if any enemy shinobi came upon him-his chakra was depleted and his spirit shattered... Left on his own; defenseless. 

He couldn't do a thing.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps approaching from outside. He gasped, hands skittering over the sheet beneath him; reaching, reaching and finding nothing. Where could he go? His heart thumped like horse hooves dropping powerfully in the pit of his chest. 

The cabin door opened just as Kakashi's hand found the edge of the sheet. He yanked it over him, curling in on himself as much as his injuries allowed, and hid deftly beneath it with a small, barely audible whine.

...

* * *

 ...

 Iruka sprinted back to the cabin and blasted through the door, making it swing wide and crash with a rebound against the wall. 

The sheet-covered lump on the floor flinched, but no sound was made when the chunin stepped boldly into the room, panting. He blinked, sweat dripping down his temple, and frowned.

"K-Kakashi-san?" and then he realized what he was looking at and a cool wave of relief fringed with hilarity blustered through him, "What? What are you doing in there?"

A tiny corner of the sheet peeled back, and Iruka saw a tuft of bloodied silver hair and then one darkly-lashed slate-grey eye. The Copy-ninja mumbled something inarticulately. Iruka had to steel himself against the inordinate spasm of affection this small gesture of sheepishness engendered in him. 

He had to remind himself that he was looking at one of the nation's most elite and ruthless killers. But, even as he reminded himself of this fact, he couldn't help but to find something about the way the other boy was childishly hiding under a blanket-as if such a flimsy thing could offer him any real protection-hopelessly endearing. 

Iruka stood up from where he'd been hunched over, hands resting on his knees while he'd fought to catch his breath. He wrinkled his nose a little in bemusement and smiled faintly before dropping to his knees beside the hiding ANBU.

"I see you've taken the necessary precautions." he teased, hoping to ease some of the tension belied in the others tense frame. A light pink blush colored the sliver of Kakashi's cheeks poking out from the sheet, and the other boy looked at him a little dolefully through his long, dark lashes before-against all odds-laughing very quietly. 

Iruka's veins seemed to contract, heat floundering through him at the low chuckle.

"I was..." Kakashi's mismatched eyes shifted as if he were searching for what he was going to say next, "I was creating a preliminary defensive structure..." He trailed off lamely. 

Iruka snorted, pushing some of his dark bangs back behind his ears, and smiled indulgently.

"I see that." And, he laughed, reaching a hand forward to brush the pads of his fingers against a few of Kakashi's pale, wayward strands. To his surprise, the other boy didn't cringe away from the delicate touch. The soft rosy color of the Copy-Ninja's blush deepened a shade. Iruka's careful hand retracted when he saw Kakashi's dual-chromatic eyes widen, as if his own reaction had surprised him too.

Iruka smiled, and then sat back a little on his heels. He shrugged.

"I think I got a little ahead of myself." he explained, "I'm not upset with you, I just needed some time to think about what happened."

At the mention of their earlier, steamy interaction, Kakashi paled. He seemed to be fighting the urge to dip back down beneath the sheet. Iruka went on, his smile settling into a more serious expression. He looked down at the other boy, his brows lifting in an expression of slight dismay. 

"I just..." he started, "I really didn't expect that to happen."

The Copy-Ninja squeezed his eyes closed, and Iruka saw the rise and fall of the other boy's chest quicken beneath the thin sheet. He could only imagine the expression tightening the rest of the ANBU's face in nervousness. He waited for Kakashi to say something, but the silver-haired teen merely looked down and to the side, seemingly stricken.

Iruka coughed, and bit his lip, looking away now himself. Rubbed his pointer finger against one temple shyly.

"You're just," he said, and he felt the Copy-Ninja's energy stiffen like it was petrified, but he continued regardless, "You're very, very beautiful."

Suddenly their vision connected, as if their eyes had been drawn together by magnets. Iruka's breath caught in his throat. Kakashi was looking at him steadily, if not a little fearfully and questioningly above the loose cover of the sheet. And, the chunin felt rooted somehow, ingrained. The slanted, almost fae-like shape of Kakashi's eyes and their vivid contrast of red and grey eyes was-there was no other word for it-mesmerizing.

Iruka was taken aback.

Kakashi said nothing. He was looking up at him, from some very elusive, very frail place within himself; and Iruka was shocked at the emotion he saw reflected back at him there. It was almost as if they'd looked at each other for the first time. And, suddenly, the pony-tailed boy knew, without a doubt, that he was seeing into a side of the legendary, cold-blooded killer that nobody else got to see. 

It took all of his strength not to reach out and touch him again.

...

* * *

 

...

"The-ere." Iruka scarcely breathed over Kakashi's bare skin, "That wasn't so bad."

For a moment, shadowed eyes glancing at Iruka almost sideways from where he lay on his back on the sheeted floor, it seemed like Kakashi had a blockage in his throat. He grunted a little, hands opening and closing nervously at the sides of his pale hips, and then he huffed. Blushing furiously.

"Easy for you to say. You're not... Not the one who's naked."

Iruka didn't know what to say to that, a vivid rush of heat whirling from the pit of his belly up his chest and neck to flood his face-and he tried with all his might to avoid looking too close at the nervy shinobi lying completely undressed and defenseless on the floor before his knees. 

It was nearly impossible.

When he'd told the other boy that he was beautiful, Iruka hadn't been exaggerating. In fact, again finding himself confronted again with the milky, inescapably delicate look of Kakashi's skin and the lithe balance of the other's wiry muscle and almost elegant bone structure, beautiful didn't seem to cover it. There was an entrancing juxtaposition about the Copy-Ninja that gave him an alluring quality that was hard to ignore. The subtle undertones of the pale skin that gave it a soft glow, as if he were naturally coated in candlelight-the flickering bustle of the fireplace behind Iruka casting a sort of double radiance upon the other's uncovered hide. The sleek, defined narrowness of his cheekbones and jaw emerging as unspeakably, almost what could nearly be considered a _girlish_ gracefulness, flowing into all of the taut dips and hollows of his body.

It was at complete and utter odds with the aura that emanated from the pale shinobi.

With the Copy-Ninja's furtive, almost ambiguously evasive glances, and the way the angles of his frame tended to fold in on themselves like the the bridled energy of a tightly coiled spring; there was every glimmer of an impression of a wild, caged animal. A primal, unspoken _push_ to the contingency of the ANBU's gaze that made one's blood pressure rise and every instinct of fight or flight within them seem to ring on alarm. The way Kakashi's very skin seemed to be clouded with the faintest razor sharp smell of spiced air, because of the other's lethal affinity to electricity.

"What." Kakashi's low voice jostled him out of his reverie. Iruka's vision focused and he realized he'd been staring.

The Copy-Ninja stared right back at him, hands now bunched untidily between his legs, shoulders tense and knotting with muscle. His grey and red eyes were wider than Iruka'd ever seen them.

Shit!

"Uh." he said, before twisting where he sat to face the large pot of water, honey, and herbs he'd set before the mantel, "Let's get you cleaned off."

Kakashi grumbled something so low Iruka could hardly begin to make it out, his defined features wincing in what could only be a horrific amount of embarrassment and barely withheld fear.

Pity flowed through the brown-haired teen and, moving with stated slowness, he lifted a torn strip of the sheet and dipped it into the now warmly bubbling pot. He couldn't forget the real reason behind what they were doing-again-the slim frame divested before him had undergone enough brutality to nearly break any restraint left in the wild ANBU. It was just as likely for the other boy to strike as it was for him to accept any help.

But, as Iruka wrung out the cloth and moved closer to the Copy-Ninja, he thought the utter embarrassment of the situation might have won out over any residual fear.

"Ah, p-please." Kakashi gritted out, his skin breaking into goosebumps when the chunin lightly pressed the warmed wet fabric to his skin, "What-"

But, Iruka, with a forceful smile, soothed the other boy gently.

"Don't worry, Hatake-san. I won't do anything unexpected, and this will all be over before you know it."

The silver-haired boy's eyebrows dipped in what was mostly anxiety, but, to Iruka's surprise, more than a little frustration as well. Kakashi bit his lip, still bruised and bloodied from having split open during their kissing earlier, and nearly whined.

"No." he said, catching Iruka's wrist where the chunin touched him, "Please. I meant to ask. What do I call you?"

It took a beat longer than it should for Iruka to realize what the ANBU was asking, mismatched eyes squinted with anxiety and lips open breathlessly. He rocked back on his heels a little, but Kakashi's hand stayed resolutely wrapped around his tanned wrist. It took a paramount force of will not to let his eyes slide their way down the other boy's figure to where he now only covered himself with one hand.

He smiled and laughed a little, having got so caught up in the seriousness of the situation that he'd forgotten to even tell Kakashi his name-it seemed a little ridiculous.

"Oh." he said, "Of course... My name is Umino Iruka, Hatake-san."

Kakashi's eyes widened in almost childlike innocence, and he nodded. His blush deepening.

"Iruka..." he murmured, "Please. Call me Kakashi."

And, just like that Iruka's nerves, contrary to logic or any sort of bounds within the realm of normalcy, became incompatibly wrought. 

They had made out. The Copy-Ninja was so naked right now it was distracting. And, now, they were on a first name basis. 

Iruka shuddered deeply, his free hand lifting to cover his own blush, and that was when he saw it. The smallest, most fragile little glimpse of beauty that had his heart gushing with blood peppered with heat and his gut dropping.

The soft, natural pout of the other boy's lips was lifted ever so slightly at one corner, casting a softness to his sharp features that made Iruka feel like he was melting. To be on the receiving end of such a tentative, crooked little smile was unexpectedly affirming in the most indescribable way. It made him feel like he was being regarded by a shy fairy prince who only ever came out in the starlit curtain of night.

Moving his arm slowly, Iruka leaned forwards once more and, Kakashi's cold fingers still curled around his wrist, he ran the wet cloth over the other boy's bruised skin. Tears buzzing behind his blinking eyes.

...

* * *

 

...

 It was impossible to stay still. 

With each careful swab of the warm, dampened fabric against his bare, broken skin and bruises, Kakashi struggled not to squirm. Or make any noise.

Both were tantamount to a confession of weakness and, completely undressed and on his back like he already was, it was the only certain way of making a mortifying situation even worse. And, both were, despite his most fervent efforts, winning over his frayed self control brutally. 

It didn't help that the two of them had been making out earlier. The truth was that Kakashi had used his Sharingan on Iruka, but it hadn't been on purpose. He'd been in a situation that must've triggered him into it, without him fully realizing it until it was coldly pointed out to him.

Kakashi gasped as the soft, lulling heat of the wet cloth rubbed a slow circle over his collarbone and shoulder. It brought out a pitiful shudder that had his back and rib muscles contracting, sending a lance of sharp pain stabbing through his body and making him clench his teeth around a hiss.

He was all too aware of the heightened sensitivity of his skin. Of the open air between his lean legs and how there was nothing but the hot pulsing grip of his own hand covering his most private area. It was getting to be too much.

The Copy-Ninja ignored the other boy's concerned stare and, with ragged breaths, shifted his eyes to the orange and yellow flames of the fireplace. 

He'd only ever been in situations similar to this, him for all intents and purposes, naked-another person, fully clothed, and touching him-during S-ranked missions. Missions where, in order to survive being killed by the target's often sadistic edge, he'd had to use his Sharingan.

First, to hypnotize whoever the target was, usually high-ranking officials who Konoha had been hired to reveal their crimes like diplomats or politicians-to essentially blind them to the fact that they'd just seen his kekkai-genkai. The haunting "gift" he'd been given that day, years ago now, when Obito had dyed and had Rin surgically implant the Uchiha's mystical eye into Kakashi's damaged eye socket. 

Then, another layer of genjutsu. One that essentially stripped them of all internal prohibitions... Not that, at the sight of his body and face, unclothed and unprotected, there'd ever been much shown towards him in the way of restraint... Kakashi bit his lip.

Iruka's hand moved lower, sweeping a warm tumble of heated fabric and herbal water over his chest. Excess liquid dribbled loose and trickled over his shivering skin onto the sheet beneath him. His nipples began to harden. Kakashi's hand flinched where he held himself between his legs, and suddenly he was gasping again. He wanted to roll onto his side and curl into a ball. He wanted Iruka to touch him where it was cold. 

He wanted to not be aroused right now. 

What if Iruka thought he was disgusting again?

The chunin seemed to be picking up on his thoughts as he dragged the warm cloth gingerly across the ANBU's ribs. A faint smile graced the symmetry of the brown-haired teens features, instantly flooding Kakashi's wracked nerves with buzzing heat. Heat that seemed to stem from the slippery warmth that was the wake of every timid brush of Iruka's steady fingers through the cloth. 

"Easy, take it easy..." 

Kakashi's ears pounded with his pulse at the soft almost purr of Iruka's voice. It took all of his frayed self control not to buck his hips into his hand at the touch of that too gentle, too warm voice. He shivered, his breath hiccuping a little in his chest. The chunin's hand had reached the slim dip of his waist and the hard planes of his lower abdomen. 

Instead of releasing the shuddered gasp that was working its way up his throat, Kakashi grit his teeth and shakily asked.

"Why're y-you t-talking to me like I'm a horse?"

Iruka sat back for an instant, surprised puzzlement twisting his brows, removing his hands from Kakashi's skin completely. It was cold and somehow even more uncomfortable without the brown-haired boy with the scarred nose touching him. The Copy-Ninja squirmed and then managed to stop it, squeezing himself a little as his skin broke out in goose-bumps.

He was starting to sweat.

"I uh-" Iruka flushed, frowning a little confusedly, "That wasn't, ah-"

"Just." Kakashi gritted out, blushing so hard he felt his veins might burst, "Let's just get this over with."

The chunin looked at him, not a small amount of pity shining through his honey-brown gaze, and it was enough to make Kakashi wrinkle his nose and snarl. Iruka lurched back, eyes widening. Kakashi twisted beneath him, spitting like a cornered wolf, and started to raise both his hands, whether to attack or repel the chunin-Iruka didn't give him a chance to find out.

"Nuh-uh. No you don't."

Taking both the weakened ANBU's slim wrists in his fists, he banged them hard to the floor beside Kakashi's ears. The silver-haired teen let in a sharp intake of breath, the hatred in his mismatched eyes giving way to wide-eyed fear instead. One of Kakashi's legs kicked ineffectually beneath him, and Iruka, rolling atop the other now, pinned both his legs with his own.

Kakashi gulped, swallowing loudly. Stared back up at him from where he lay, pinned and fully nude beneath the other boy. Shivering.

Iruka frowned down at him, face unimaginably hot. He was all too aware of the uncovered, slick and flinching skin pressed up against him.

"What do you think you're doing?" The chunin all but growled. His tightly spoken words sending a steamy breath against Kakashi's cold cheek. And, suddenly, Obito's eye was crying, dripping hot tears down the side of Kakashi's face into his blushing ears.

Kakashi felt his face contort into a furious grimace. He tried to move his arms but his wrists had been pinned tight. His heart beat madly against the jumping cage of his ribs.

"Don't," he whispered, eyes blazing cold hatred up into the shocked face of the other boy, "Look at me like that."

Iruka's grip tightened on his wrists as he seemed to tread through his own confusion for an instant. The frustrated dip between his brows deepened. Kakashi started squirming again, beginning to panic.

He was naked. He was naked and he was trapped. He-

Scattered, jumping memories from the litany of painful S-ranked missions flitted like flashing wings before his eyes, serrating his vision. 

_Fear, cold and tight, leaping through him in rhythm with the quake of his pulse as a large, shadowy figure took hold of his ankles, sliding his legs open like a present. The crawl of his skin, bare and sticky with saliva where he'd been licked as a rough hand jammed itself between his thighs. The sudden jostle of breath escaping his chest as he was forcibly flipped, grappled with, and pinned by someone much bigger than him. A terrible, terribly cold feeling of distance from his own self as, to his stinging shame and humiliation, he heard the whimpering gasps of himself getting pounded harshly into the rickety mattress. The hot flashes and chills that would cover him in a fine, sticky coat, mingling with his sweat, as he fought, breath rasping in his ears, not to vomit as soon as he was left alone._

It'd all become so common to him somehow.

The fear. The degradation. The helplessness.

The despair.

He'd never had sex with anyone outside of the parameters of an S-ranked mission. Never even kissed. 

Sometimes, walking the corridors of the ANBU municipal building, he heard other cadets whispering about him. About how he must have a really hot face when he's cumming, or musings about the look of his body without all those layers of clothes-and he would always run and hide. Lock himself inside the nearest bathroom stall, his entire body shuddering with self-disgust and loathing, the rough jumble of his breathing uneven and heavy in his ears as his stomach flipped. He'd never fully gotten over his boyish aversion to talking about girls-it was another thing entirely to hear others talking about him in the same manner.

It made him wonder if, despite the mask and his penchant for baggy clothing, if there wasn't something about him that made him look effeminate. Weak. Delicate.

Submissive.

Kakashi hated this part of himself. Hated that others took such joy in it, hated-

"-Stop!" he yelled, tears beginning to blur his vision, and there was a tight, whooshing ache of fear rattling through his belly, "No! Don't touch me!"

The man above him seemed to jerk his head back in surprise, but Kakashi still wasn't free. He couldn't take it anymore-it hurt so bad. He didn't-

"Hey..." a voice whispered gently from somewhere above him. The Copy-Ninja squeezed his eyes shut tight, hot tears spilling down his cheeks into his gritted teeth. He began to shake his head back and forth, twisting his hips, trying to thrash his arms and legs about desperately. 

 "Nngh!" Both his wrists were passed into one strong hand, pinning them over his head. Kakashi whined, kicking one of his legs free, but now the man was pressing him into the floor with the full weight of his body and-he couldn't get out-he-

"Shhh..." A rough palm caught the side of his face, stopping the tossing of his head, and pressed against his tear-sticky cheek softly. Kakashi hiccuped, freed leg kicking once at the wooden floor ineffectually as he canted his bare hips, trying to roll out from under the man on top of him.

'I _'m not going to hurt you_.'

Kakashi was crying. Terrified, choking sobs shook through his slender frame crushed into the thin sheet covering the floor beneath him, and his unkempt silvery bangs fell into his eyes when he tried to shake his head again.

"N-No..." he argued, still feeling trapped and hurt, "No, you're gonna... You-"

' _Kakashi_.' The gentle voice said, ' _Kakashi, it's me. Iruka_.'

Iruka? Who-

The clumped dark lashes of the ANBU's eyes fluttered, as if he were expecting to be hit, and he frowned, blinking. The pressure on his pinned wrists was released, and suddenly he found two strong arms wrapping themselves around his slim waist, cradling the heave of Kakashi's panicked chest snugly to another's through the loose fabric of the other's shirt. It, along with the clothed weight pressed against his damp skin further down his body, made him all too powerfully aware of his own nudity. Kakashi gasped, feeling a taut thread of heat tingle down through him. His hips jerked a little.

One of the other boy's- _Iruka's_ -legs were placed almost roughly between his own for the sake of balance. The coarse fabric of his rescuer's pants rubbing against the silkiness of Kakashi's skin where his legs met. It was too much-It wasn't enough. It was fire.

The ANBU's heart pounded against his ribs, echoing tightly up the back of his throat. And, then, crying a little again in remnant fear and overwhelming embarrassment, Kakashi suddenly found himself rocking his hips, squeezing himself against the weight of that pressing thigh. His breath hitched, and it was too late to stop, he couldn't-

The Copy-Ninja shut his eyes, the heels of his palms flying to his temples, and he bit his lip _hard_.

Kami help him, but he couldn't stop.

Iruka had a smell about him, a diaphanous intermingling of scents that were at odds with itself: warmth and the cool licks of an ocean breeze; tingling spice and something palely floral. It was subtle and overpowering at the same time. It washed over Kakashi's face as he clutched the other boy closer to him, burying his face in Iruka's neck. The thin skin covering his jutting hip bones was beginning to feel a little burned by the rubbing of the chunin's clothing. It made him feel unsteady and hot, sweat beading on the back of his neck.

What was he doing?

He felt it the moment Iruka felt him grow hard. The chunin pulled back with a gasp, soft brown eyes wide with disbelief and alarm. Kakashi turned his face away, tears from Obito's Sharingan dribbling in a slant across the bridge of his nose and into his mouth. He couldn't bear to see the disgust that must surely be collecting in the other's shocked gaze. Seeing it, the rejection in Iruka's eyes-so gentle and open-Kakashi had only this: That it would break him.

When did he become so attached?

Was it that first moment he'd saw the chunin? Crushed to the rough grain of the floor, shivering and mostly naked, slathered with blood-the moment he'd raised his eyes to see the surreal sight of a shadowy figure crouched, kunai held before furious, glinting eyes; the prone, defeated bodies of the two Iwa-nin lying struck in a sheen of bloody viscera-that'd been the first moment since his sensei had died when he'd felt truly safe.

Safe.

It was a word that was utterly at odds with how he felt now, yet it was the fulcrum behind the tumultuous swing of his chaotic emotions. He felt like tearing his hair out with his hands. Like holding his breath until something popped, a gateway of color smashing behind his eyelids that would take him away; far, far away from the horror of what he was about to do.

For, as sure as the waves of the ocean were guided and tugged by the pull of the moon, surely-he was being drawn. 

Plummeting. Disintegrating. Spiraling towards some unfathomably tenuous fate that'd already, at the flicker of it's presence, stuck him clean through. Kakashi's breath caught in a shaky, frightened sob. He writhed beneath the other boy, every muscle in his body quaking.

 

"I-Iruka, I-"

...

* * *

 ...

"-It's okay." 

Iruka whispered, looking down at the flinching boy beneath him sadly, realization finally heating the spear of his gaze. 

All of a sudden it'd became totally and fully clear to him just how precarious everything was. And, how precious.

Looking down at Kakashi's grimacing face, the silver-haired boy's eyes screwed shut like he was being hit, Iruka was only beginning to see the true nature of their situation. The delicacy of it... Of Kakashi.

It wasn't just the impropriety of the interaction that was getting to Kakashi, Iruka figured-although the deep blush coloring the other boy's pale ears and cheeks spoke more than enough to that-it was something else too. Infinitely more hidden, more secretive than the face he kept masked. Something internal. And, once sighted, utterly too recognizable and too entrancing to ignore. 

Hunger. 

There was no other word for it. It was a hunger of flinty, sparking proportions. The unseen, driving force that kept Kakashi unraveling at the slightest touch from him. It hinted at more than just a base attraction between them both, something deeper and-if the frightened and embarrassed tears and taut, hitching sobs were anything to judge by-something that wasn't fully known to Kakashi himself either.

That. Changed things.

Iruka blinked, the wheels in his head quickly churning his brain to useless mush the longer he stayed frozen, and he looked down at the Copy-Ninja. Saw a coin-flip afterimage there in the slanted curves of the other boy's wincing face, a reflection of an inner child. Lost and desolate. Starving for affection.

 

"Kakashi..." he lowered himself nearer, close enough to breathe huskily into the shell of the other boy's ear, "Don't be afraid."

...

* * *

 

...

The Copy-ninja was terrified. 

Hiding behind closed eyes, fingers snarling in the downy hair crusted with blood round his temples, he was a shivering mess. And, there was no escaping this.

Iruka sighed softly above him, the push of his breath warming the already hot skin of Kakashi's tear-damp cheeks. A hand, fingertips rough with the graze of a shinobi's callouses, traced the curve of his cheek so gently it made him shudder and flinch. Kakashi peeked open his Sharingan eye. But, this was no illusion.

Something terrible and needy had awoken in some deep and secret place inside of him, a place now weathered, frayed like the palms of the gloves he wore. Kakashi's breath caught in his chest and stayed. He had nowhere to hide, no hope of even pushing the other boy away. It was too late.

Iruka moved his hand, hovering over him now with his weight rested on one elbow, and the tender stripe he was coaxing from the wet of Kakashi's cheeks slipped to his neck. Cupped it like a bird with a broken wing. Thumb rubbing tingling eddies of sensation along the nervous jump of his adam's apple as he swallowed. 

"It's okay." Iruka breathed into his ear, the plush of his lips whispering against his earlobe, "I know... It's _okay_."

Kakashi's pulse staggered. He gasped, eyes sliding shut again but for an entirely different reason. The artful slide of Iruka's warm mouth against the blushing skin of his ear had him struggling to stay in control. A fine-edged tremble had started to join, braiding itself hotter and fuller, gathering sloppily between his legs.

"Shhh..." The chunin murmured and then grazed the silky edge of his earlobe with his teeth, "You're driving me crazy."

Kakashi, panting and trying with all his strength just to stay still, whimpered softly once. Immediately new waves of heat smashed through him, circling like a steamy, internal fog beneath the skin of his neck and face. Iruka moved. Ever so slightly, with an angled roll of his hips, he ground himself against Kakashi. 

"Mnh."

A light groan spilled loose, Kakashi's strained reserve shattering with that one, singular movement. And, just as unexpected and miraculous, another feeling began to seep in, electric curls of resonating warmth and something else, something he hadn't felt for so long it was hard to recognize it at first.

Iruka's nose bumped his jawline, trailing down the bare, shivering skin of his neck, as the other boy nuzzled him. Another hot gust of breath against the junction of his neck and shoulder, and Kakashi was moving again. Hands loosening from where they'd been worrying at his temples, Kakashi bit his lip, tasting blood, and allowed himself to be brave. Braver than he could ever remember being-His arms floated down to settle over Iruka's broad shoulders. Hardly daring to breathe.

"I-I'm sorry." His voice escaped him then, sounding nearly as tremulous and shy as he really felt, "I-"

Iruka stopped in the tasting of his collarbones, lifting his head to look down at Kakashi warmly. There was something shining in those soft honey-brown eyes, a faint crease between Iruka's thick brows, some sort of feeling that made the Copy-Ninja feel like something had come loose within him; spinning freely and unraveling at a rapid pace. Kakashi opened his eyes, blinking a few times, and looked up slowly through his lashes. His heart was drumming an off-kilter rhythm in his throat, his body gyrating helplessly of it's own accord, dragging his bruised skin over and over against Iruka's clothes. 

Iruka's hands moved and then stilled, less than an inch from the soft, tear-stained skin of Kakashi's blushing cheeks. The pony-tailed boy waited until he'd caught the disparate red and dark grey gleam of his stare, holding it. And, then, at the passing of some unspoken word, Iruka was cradling Kakashi's face between his rough palms, thumbs sliding ever so gently against the tear droplets resting on his face. And, smiled.

"What are you being sorry for?" The chunin's lips parted in an affectionate sort of budding grin, white teeth peeking out on one side, "You're okay... It's-Do you want me to touch you?"

Kakashi, trapped in the lightness of the other boy's gaze, didn't know what to say. His mouth opened then closed. There were tears forming in the corners of Iruka's eyes, but there was no trace of anger or disgust shining in them-Only a compassion so strong, so elemental it was like the unremittent gush of a waterfall. He swallowed, feeling like he was about to do something very, very strange and alien to him-willingly trust the entirety of his being to another person-and not be expecting to be hurt.

The Copy-ninja nodded breathlessly. A few lingering tears finally slipped out, tumbling from his slanted eyes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
